How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons

Animal Crossing New Horizons time travel is a “mechanic” that you can use in order to jump into the future and the past in the game. It’s not really a mechanic; time travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons is basically just tricking the game by messing with the date and time on your console. That said, it can be used to progress through the game in a manner that’s a little bit cheaty. So, in our How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons guide, we’ll show you what you need to do to execute this cheat.

Animal Crossing New Horizons – How to Time Travel?

To time travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons, hit the Home button, then go to System Settings. Go all the way to the bottom of this menu, to System. You’ll find date and time under this option, so click on it. Now that you’re in this menu, turn off the Synchronize Clock via Internet option. Now, just change the time and date to whatever you want. However, when you go back into the game, it’ll still be set to the date and time before you messed with it. So, you’ll have to save and exit the game, then go back in. The date will now be the one you set.

Now, there are some things about time travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons that we have to note. For one, every change that you make to the island, such as picking stuff up and chopping down trees, remains permanent no matter what you do. So, you can’t use time travel to erase mistakes. Also, when you rewind time, you won’t get an announcement from Nook. If you order something from Residential Services, you have to hop forward in time for it to arrive; you can’t get that order in the past.

What’s also interesting is that, if you jump several days into the past, and then one day into the future, the game will still treat this as a new day. And, there seems to be no Mr. Resseti to berate you for messing with time. Last, but certainly not least, time jumping might end up messing with the online play, so exercise caution with that.